


No Fortunate Son

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Fill-in Scene, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scenes, Sentinels, Vietnam War, X-Men: Days of Future Past Fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 05:38:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18888265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: “Take a team, fan out, search the area,” Stryker says to one of the men. “They can’t be too far, and there might be more injured like this. Even if they’re dead, bring them back. We might still be able to salvage something.” He shakes his head. “Not ideal, but we do what needs to be done in war.”“We’re not the enemy,” Alex grinds out, his wound is in agony now even though Stryker’s fingers are gone. “All we want to do is be left alone.”“Then you should have let your freak friend kill me,” the man chuckles. Alex lunges for him, but something hits him in the back of the head, hard, and everything goes black.Fill in scenes of Alex during Days of Future Past





	No Fortunate Son

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by finding a piece of trivia on IMDB that stated that a scene from the film was cut, in which Alex had been captured and was being used to test a prototype Sentinel. Since no one saw fit to give it to us, I decided it was time to do it myself!
> 
> There is character death in this fic but the only instance of it is canon compliant for DOFP, which is why there is no warning for it.

Ink’s voice is barely audible over the hum of the engines. “I can’t believe we’re going home, man.” Alex just nods, he doesn’t know what to say to that. 

It sounds strange, “going home”. Home hasn’t existed for a long time. The mansion is the closest thing he has to something he could call a home, but it’s a shell of the place he learned to love. Charles is broken, Hank is wrapped up in his work, Raven and Erik and Darwin and Angel are gone. And Sean...Raven told him herself, and he knows she wouldn’t lie. Sean is dead. 

_ Where am I supposed to go?  _ The only place he’ll be accepted is the mansion. Not many people want anything to do with a mutant who also happens to be an ex-con. That’s why he’s here in this war in the first place. Not because he believes in the cause, because the more he fights the more he feels like the only cause here is anger, revenge, a muddy slogging fight to take a few inches of ground like everyone is still kids in a sandbox. He’s here because it’s the only place he was wanted. 

Job after job turned him down. Even when he hid the fact that he was a mutant, even when people didn’t recognize him from the fiasco in Cuba, his name is always going to be connected to a murder charge. He got spooked after one place seemed to wonder why he isn’t  _ still _ in prison, apparently government leniency that got him out of a life sentence so he could go almost die trying to save the world is sketchy at best.

He doesn’t really want to go back. It felt like the best option, once. But not anymore. He had been starting to forget what it felt like to be around people, to have people actually treat him like a human being and not either a monster to be feared or a subhuman  _ thing _ to be used however they wanted. 

But then Charles got worse, and Alex can’t say he blames him. He spent over a year in solitary, and it’s nowhere near the same as spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair, but he knows a little bit of the anger at being trapped, of the helpless inability to do almost anything. He knows the thought of spending the rest of his life there was horrific, and he honestly believed it was all he deserved. Charles doesn’t deserve to be crippled like that, he did nothing to warrant it. So when his draft letter came, he didn’t run, not like some of the others.  _ Where else would I have gone? _

Alex doesn’t know if it will be better to go back or not. To live in a house full of ghosts. Charles promised he would always have a place for Alex at the mansion, and he knows the man would keep his word.  _ But can I go back? _

He doesn’t have more time to wonder because there’s a sudden rattling noise that he knows all too well. Anti-aircraft fire.  _ No, no, we were supposed to be in friendly territory.  _ He hopes desperately that they get through. His stomach is churning, he’s so damn scared of being in another crash.  _ I lost half my family last time.  _

And then there’s a tearing sound, and he sees light through the sides of the plane. One of the mutants, a kid he doesn’t know, slumps over, coughing. Blood spatters the floor, and then the mutant’s body twitches and goes still. Alex freezes. He can hear the yelling all around him, he can hear the shots still firing, but it’s like none of it is really there. Instead, Scott is yelling at him to get his parachute, and there’s the oddest feeling of falling…

They are falling. There’s an acrid smell of smoke drifting through the holes torn in the plane; one of the engines must have been hit. Fire, falling...he reaches out for someone’s hand but there’s no one there.  _ Scott, where is Scott? _

Someone is yelling for them to bail out, and he blinks, is that dad’s voice? What is he doing here? Is he dreaming again? And then the plane lurches and flings him against the side, and a white hot pain burns through his ribs. He looks down, and there’s blood, when did that happen? He didn’t feel it before. 

They’re going down, fast, and his training is trying to kick in, he knows how to do this. He reaches for his chute, but his vision is blurring, and it looks yellow instead of olive.  _ No, no, no. Don’t go back there. You can’t. _ Most soldiers he knows who have been in crashes and lived say their training takes over, it’s muscle memory. They do what they know how to do because it’s the only thing they know. But for them, it was their first crash. Alex has memories that are so much older than Basic. 

Scott’s capable hands buckling his chute, pulling him out of the plane. Falling, knowing his brother wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Rain and thunder and trees snapping in the wind, and the smell of smoke. A sharp pain in his ankle and wrist. Scott carrying him until they found a road, sitting there holding what was left of the parachute over them both even though it wasn’t doing any good and they were soaked. 

He blinks back into reality; he’s going to die here if he doesn’t focus. He can hear his big brother’s voice in his head.  _ I didn’t save you so you could die in the next plane that falls out of the sky with you in it, stupid. _ Scott was always calling him that and then cuffing his head because he  _ could _ and Alex was too short to reach Scott’s for payback. 

He buckles his chute and jumps before he has too much time to think about it. He hears the plane’s ruined engines coughing behind him, and the wind rushing all around. Falling feels like it takes forever, just like last time. He does remember to pull his chute when he should, and he manages to get almost all the way to the ground before it hangs up in a tree.

He cuts himself free, but when he falls that blinding pain hits again. He’s dizzy for a second, and leans against the tree he got caught in.  _ Where the hell are we? _ He doesn’t think they got too far from the camp, and they should have been flying toward friendly territory.  _ Did this area change hands and we hadn’t heard yet? _ He wonders if the woods are just crawling with the VietCong now.  _ It would be just our luck to escape the crazy lunatic scientist to get captured by the enemy.  _ He’s not sure if torture or experimentation is worse. 

He hears crashing and feels the energy surge in his hands, he may be injured but he’s not going down without a fight. He spins toward the sound, but it’s only Toad leaping through the underbrush. Behind him are Ink and a guy he thinks went by “Spike”. 

“Hey man, you okay?” Ink asks, clearly noticing the spreading patch of red on his fatigues. 

“I will be.” He’s had worse. “Anyone know where we are?”

“Jungle all looks the same,” Spike mumbles. “Did see a road when I was coming down though, that’s where we’re heading. Hopefully something comes along. Friendly or not, we might be able to get ourselves a ride.”  _ After Stryker, I’m not sure what counts as ‘friendly’. _

They stumble on through the tangled vines and underbrush, heading in what Alex really hopes is the right direction. His side aches and burns, and he can feel blood running down it, soaking his shirt and the waist of his pants. He stops long enough to rip off his shirt sleeves to bandage it, not ideal but the best he can do. He’s going to need to get it clean soon, open wounds in the jungle are a sure way to end up half-dead of infection. He’s learned that the hard way once already. 

Suddenly Toad brings up a hand, warning them to stop. Alex blinks, now that they’re not moving, now that everything’s quiet, he can hear vehicles. They must be close to the road. They move closer carefully, staying under cover of the trees.  _ The jungles are good for hiding. You don’t see people who don’t want to be seen. _ Alex has been in more than one ambush, and they’re always totally unaware of the danger until shots are fired and men are falling.  _ We might as well use it to our advantage too. _ He hopes, if this is an American convoy, that they don’t mistake any movement in the trees for the enemy and shoot at them. Or that the VietCong soldiers aren’t doing the same thing Alex and the others already are.  _ If we can hide here, so can they, we might end up getting caught in another battle. _

He glances out from behind one of the trees. The trucks passing are familiar, definitely American.  _ We have to figure out a way to get them to help us without getting mistaken for the enemy first. And without them turning on us because we’re mutants.  _ Alex knows from personal experience that sometimes men on their own side of the war aren’t above shooting at mutants in the heat of a battle and claiming they were killed by the enemy. He’s already lost two friends (well, the closest thing you can have to friends in a place like this) to what everyone knows was friendly fire, but no one will report.  _ It’s only a mutant killed. No one cares about them. _

He’s the least likely to set off people’s suspicion. Toad will get pegged as mutant right away, as will Spike. Ink might be able to get away with just having a lot of crazy tattoos, but they can’t count on it. 

“I’ll go out, get their attention, see if we can trust them.” As long as they don’t shoot first and ask questions later, he’ll probably be able to get them to help him. He glances down at the blood on his side.  _ Yeah, I can probably get them to help.  _ He just hopes that they’ll want to help the others too.  _ I’m not sure I totally thought this through; what if they think I’m human and want to take me but not the others?  _ But he’s not going to make it out of here on his own, he needs help, and the others aren’t as injured, so they might be able to get themselves out.  _ I guess we have to take our chances. _ Maybe their luck will turn and this will be a mutant-friendly unit. _ And maybe somewhere out there, there’s mutant pigs that can fly. _

He stumbles out of the treeline, hands raised, as the last few trucks pass. There’s audible clicks as the men turn their weapons on him. Fortunately, they’re not so on edge that they shoot.  _ Maybe we are in area that’s still supposed to be under our control? _ But then why did that plane get shot out of the sky? 

He can hear the men shouting, banging on the tops of the trucks for them to stop. “That’s one of ours. Looks injured.” He breathes out a shallow sigh of relief.  _ Well, they didn’t shoot me on sight, so that’s a good start. _

And then there’s two men beside him, supporting his arms on their shoulders, pulling him toward the trucks. “Sit down, we’ll get the medic back here. What happened?” Alex isn’t so sure telling the truth is a good idea. 

“Got separated from my unit in an ambush, and I was trying to get back to camp.” He shrugs. 

One of the men nods, starting to undo his shirt to get a better look at the wound. “Hey, call the colonel, get him back here. He’s gonna want to hear about that.”  _ Oh no. _ Alex was hoping they’d let things slide.  _ But we’re pretty far into friendly territory. They probably want to know how I ran into hostiles out there. _ Not that he’s willing to rule out the possibility, but this is going to get out of hand, really fast. He knew he shouldn’t have lied to them. But maybe they can get to a base camp before anyone finds out his story doesn’t check out, and he can get his wound treated and just disappear without anyone the wiser…

“Well, well, well. We meet again, Summers.” The voice yanks Alex out of his thoughts, and he looks up quickly, fear turning the fire in his veins to ice.  _ Stryker. _ He glances at the man who was inspecting his wound. The man has stepped back, and his gun is trained on Alex now. _ They knew. They probably knew all along.  _ He looks down at where his open shirt shows the dog tags against his chest.  _ The second they saw my name, they called the colonel.  _ It wasn’t about his lies about the ambush, it was because they knew exactly who and what he was. And now he’s surrounded. 

He tries not to look toward the forest, not to draw attention to the other mutants.  _ Please, run away, now. While you still can.  _ He’s not going to be able to get away, not injured and with everyone’s weapons trained on him, but the others might have a chance.

“I wondered if any of you freaks would survive the crash.” Stryker glances from Alex’s face to his bleeding side. “It was a bit drastic, but planes crash, soldiers go MIA, no one will ever wonder what happened to you. Especially not your kind.” He bends down so he’s looking Alex in the eyes. “And you’re not the only one, I’m sure. Where are the rest?”

Alex just glares. 

“You know, I could make this less painful, if you’ll cooperate with me,” Stryker says, and then, without warning, his fingers are digging into the wound in Alex’s side. The pain is so unexpected that Alex shouts before forcing the sound down into a muffled groan. “Who else survived, and where are they now?”

“No one else,” Alex grinds out between gritted teeth. 

“I know you’re lying. I watched at least five people bail out of that plane before it went down. So  _ where are they _ ?”

“I don’t know.” Alex shakes his head. “Never saw anyone else.” He’s never been all that good a liar, but he really hopes Stryker believes him this time.  “We didn’t exactly have time to pick a spot to meet up. I saw the road on the way down and headed for it.” That’s what he was trained to do, hopefully Stryker will believe that he reverted to what he learned in Basic. 

“Take a team, fan out, search the area,” Stryker says to one of the men. “They can’t be too far, and there might be more injured like this. Even if they’re dead, bring them back. We might still be able to salvage something.” He shakes his head. “Not ideal, but we do what needs to be done in war.”

“We’re not the enemy,” Alex grinds out, his wound is in agony now even though Stryker’s fingers are gone. “All we want to do is be left alone.” 

“Then you should have let your freak friend kill me,” the man chuckles. Alex lunges for him, but something hits him in the back of the head, hard, and everything goes black.  

* * *

When he wakes up, he’s lying on his back on a metal table. It’s cold against his skin, and he doesn’t like the clammy, damp feeling of it, like it’s been recently washed.  _ What were they cleaning off it? _ There’s a thin sheet draped over his body, pulled up to his chin, and he has the sudden gruesome thought that all they need to do is flip the folded top edge over his face and all he’ll be is a corpse.

His head still aches, a dull throb pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He doesn’t dare move too much, he can tell it’s the sort of ache that will get so much worse if he moves, and probably make him throw up. He doesn’t want to do that, his hands and feet are securely cuffed to the table and he can’t even roll over.

His wound has been treated, he can feel the stitches running along his side.  _ They’re going to patch me up so I’m healthy enough to cut apart.  _ The thought makes him shudder, which makes the headache turn less dull and more stabbing. The white light overhead isn’t helping. Even if he closes his eyes, it’s still there, burning through. 

_ I need to get out of here. _ He struggles, feeling his powers surging under his skin. Maybe he can just melt through the restraints and run, before anyone comes back. The heat fills the room, but nothing changes. The metal holding his wrists and ankles is as solid as ever, as is the table. There’s a smell of smoke, and he’s dimly aware that the sheet covering him has more or less burned away, only a few charred sections still cover his lower legs. 

He hears a door open, but he can’t tell where it is. And then someone is walking up to the table, someone he’s blurrily aware has a white coat on. “Well, Colonel, I suppose it wasn’t a complete waste.”

“No. Fortunately, that’s the one I wanted most.” Stryker’s voice makes him cringe. “The others would have been interesting to you, I’m sure, but this one was the most powerful. And the mutation is weaponizable.” 

“Of course, always the practical for you.” There’s a tsking sound, and Alex shivers at the calm way they’re discussing him practically over his head.  _ Like I don’t matter, like I’m only something to be used and studied for whatever they want. _ “You will never understand the mind of Science, colonel.”

“Just find a way to extract his powers.” Stryker mutters. “Trask didn’t pay you to be curious, he’s paying for results. So get on with it.” Alex can’t tell if he leaves the room or not, but the man with the white coat comes up to the table and leans over him, brushing away the ruined remnants of the sheet and giving Alex’s body a cursory sweeping glance. Alex shivers. He’s naked and vulnerable and restrained, unable to protect himself from whatever this man does.  

“No visible markers of mutation,” The man says, and Alex hears a pencil scratching. “Conducting a full physical exam will be necessary.” He frowns at the scorched sheet. “Power is clearly some form of combustion.” 

“I told you, it’s some kinda energy blast.” Stryker  _ is _ still in the room. Alex hates the thought that the man is just standing there watching all this. 

“And that is not something I can take to Trask’s drawing board, Colonel.” The man sounds tired, like he’s had an argument like this a hundred times. “Physical manifestations of mutations are not the same as mutations themselves. A shapeshifter does not simply shift, the change involves molecular conversion on a cellular level, in some cases modification of the DNA itself. Control of metal is created by a magnetic alignment of the iron present in the bloodstream. Mutations are much more than a fancy party trick or a weapon, which seems to be all you and your men see.” He shakes his head. “The energy comes from somewhere, and in order to replicate it, I need to find its source.” He turns away from Stryker and back to Alex. 

The man examines him clinically, like Alex is one of those frogs he and a classmate had to dissect in freshman science class. There’s nothing kind or sympathetic in those green eyes, just a scientific curiosity. 

Alex has learned to read people by the way they look at him. Mom and Dad and Scott had kind, caring eyes, worried about him when he fell and scraped a knee or bruised his elbows. His foster family looked at him like he wasn’t really him, like somehow they knew him and he didn’t. He knew they weren’t really seeing him, they were seeing someone else, someone they wanted him to be. His little sister there always looked at him with respect and trust. Until he incinerated the man who tried to hurt her. And that was the first time he saw fear in someone’s eyes. But it certainly wasn’t the last. After that there was a lot of fear, and anger, and judgement, and some kind of pure, deep seated hatred. He walked in and out of the courtroom in a sea of angry voices and angry eyes. A judge with gunmetal in his gaze, and a jury full of people with horrified stares when they saw the crime scene photos, refused to accept that Alex acted in defense of himself and his innocent sister. 

And then there was prison. There were angry eyes there too, and fearful ones, but there were ones with hunger in them, like the hunger that Alex had seen in the kidnapper’s eyes in the last few seconds they existed, when he was reaching for Haley. He hadn’t know he could be the object of that desperate lust and desire, and it had terrified him. Eyes like that still haunt his dreams. 

And then there was Charles, and Alex has never seen that man look at him with fear. Only with kindness and love, like Scott. And the others, there was fear, at first, but there was also respect, and a camaraderie that came from being the same kind of thing. From knowing what they were in other people’s eyes. 

But these eyes, these are unlike anything Alex has ever seen. They’re utterly cold, no warmth of kindness, no hot anger, no burning lust. And for all the mutants Alex has met in his life, he thinks these are the least human eyes he’s ever seen.

He wants this to stop. And almost without his awareness, there’s heat surging around him again, the familiar red glow. He hears a shocked gasp and a clatter, like the scientist studying him has retreated in a hurry and collided with some of his equipment.  _ Yes, you should be afraid of me.  _ Alex doesn’t like to hurt anyone with his powers. But he’d gladly attack Stryker or this man.  _ What they’re doing to me they’ve done to others, and want to do to more. _ And then there’s a sharp needling pain in his shoulder and his powers start to feel like they’re fading. And it’s nothing he’s doing. He’s so tired; maybe it’s because they hit his head? 

“Interesting. Power seems to be contained in the hand and chest area,” the scientist says, scribbling something on the paper that’s in his hand. “I’d like to prepare this one for further testing and possible vivisection.” Alex doesn’t remember exactly what that word means but he knows it is not good. “This could be the regenerative power source we’ve been looking for. We’d need to convert systems to operate with the plasma charge, but it’s a viable option.” Alex can’t tell if he’s starting to fade out of consciousness or if the man really is speaking gibberish now. 

He’s not really sure what is real and what he’s dreamed. He thinks they’ve cut his chest wide open, that he can see his heart, but then he blinks and there’s only a small cut where it looks like they’ve removed a narrow strip of skin. It still hurts. 

There’s more people now, poking, prodding, staring, and he hates it.  _ They act like I have no feelings, like I’m not human and shouldn’t be treated with any common decency. _ He’s not surprised, not after everything, but it doesn’t mean he has to accept it. 

“The energy conversion appears to be happening on a molecular level,” someone says. “We’ll need to…” words fade in and out, a chaos of speaking, overlapping and too fast to follow. “Need samples” “possible solution” “biological energy conversion” “plasma synthesis”. Alex doesn’t know what they’re saying. All he knows is that when they finally seem to come to a decision, it just means more pain. They’re cutting away more skin, drawing more blood. He wants to fight back but he can’t get more than a weak shimmer out of his powers. 

_ What have they done to me? _ There was a time when Alex would have given anything for his powers to be this faint. For them to be unable to hurt anyone. But now, when he truly desperately needs them, they’re gone.  _ What happened? _ He can feel a pain in his arm and when he looks up there’s a tube of some sort of green liquid running down to an IV needle.  _ Is that what’s stopping me from using my power? _

It’s stopping his power, but it doesn’t stop the pain, and he can feel every slice in his skin, every prick as they pull more blood from his body. Eventually, it’s too much, and he feels himself slipping away again. It’s a relief when the darkness comes back. 

* * *

When he wakes up, his first thought is that something they’ve done has made him go blind. He can’t see anything. He holds his hand up to his face shakily...his hands are free now, he realizes.  _ I can’t see, I can’t see. _ He’s more scared than he’d ever admit of going blind. He’s seen soldiers come back from the front lines, eyes bandaged, leaning on someone else to hold them up, dependent on them to find a safe path, the places they needed to be. He doesn’t know how he’d survive living like that.  _ Not that I’ll probably ever find out.  _ He doubts he’s going to leave this room alive.

And then there’s a faint reddish shimmer in front of him, and he wonders if it’s a false image, like the kind he used to see as a child if he squeezed his eyes tight shut and pushed the heels of his hands against them. It fades and flickers, and then grows strong enough that he can see the outline of his hand in it before it fades again. He moves his fingers, and the next flicker shows them moving the way he feels. He lets out a soft sigh of relief and leans back on the hard surface he’s lying on.  _ I’m not blind. _ And he’s so grateful for just that one tiny thing that he thinks he might cry. 

He sits up slowly; his head aches a little less and his body is free of the restraints. It feels like he’s laying on concrete now, not metal. It’s unbelievably cold. He moves just a little too fast, and his stomach rebels. There’s nothing in it to throw up, but he spits bile onto the floor as he rolls over, choking on the taste in his mouth. He pulls his legs to his chest and puts his arms around them; if he could see, he’s sure he would be able to see his breath. 

The room is pitch black and bitterly cold. Alex can feel his already dampened powers struggling to keep up with the chill. It’s worse than solitary, a hundred times worse. There he had a window, he had light. But this is total darkness. 

And then the door opens, and Alex blinks, because there’s a tiny glimmer now, a faint blue glow that doesn’t really light anything but itself and the hand holding it. He thinks briefly about trying to muster his powers enough to attack this person and get out, but just sitting up was an effort, and he knows he couldn’t run. He doesn’t want to think of what they would do to him if they found him trying to escape. 

The light shines over him and he wants to hide away from it, it hurts his eyes. He ducks his head and doesn’t look up until it, and the fingers that followed it, probing at his open wounds, disappear, and he’s left to the cold and darkness again. 

He tries, a few times, to get enough sparks to be able to see the room, to try and find a way out. But every time, all they do is fizzle and die, and the room feels colder after each attempt. He finally realizes that he’s only draining his powers faster. Without light or heat, they can’t restore themselves. Hank figured out, a long time ago, what it seems these scientists just learned. Alex’s body doesn’t generate the energy, it just repurposes what’s already around him. He can take the heat of the sun, or an explosion, or even just a bonfire, and his body will turn it into the rings of energy he’s familiar with. But this room is probably underground, definitely sealed far away from any warmth and light. 

The only light he sees is the cold blue-green glow when the scientists come to examine him. It’s clearly calculated to give him as little usable energy as possible, but it still gives off a little. He feels a little pitiful for how much he looks forward to that faint glimmer, even though all it ever means is that they’re going to inflict more pain.  _ They poke and prod and cut and slice and all I care about is that for a little while, there’s a tiny bit of light.  _

The scientists seem delighted that their theory that his powers need ambient energy is being proven true.  _ At least someone’s happy, _ he thinks bitterly. Because he’s miserable. He feels like he’s starving, even though they’re feeding him. Not much, but something every day (at least, it seems like a day, he has no way to tell time here), shoved through a slot in the door, cold and tasteless. But there’s a gnawing ache that never goes away, and it’s not in his stomach so much as it is in his bones. He can barely get sparks from his fingers now, let alone an explosion like the one he knocked Stryker out with. 

He wonders if this is what the rest of his life is going to be like.  _ Are they going to keep me locked away here so I can’t use my powers to ever escape? Are they just going to forget I exist, someday? _ The visits are less frequent now, they haven’t taken his blood in what he guesses is a couple days, based on the times he’s given food. 

_ Maybe they caught new mutants, got tired of me and are studying someone else now. _ He doesn’t want to be abandoned to the cold and the dark, to slowly starve alone down here. But he has no right to expect anything else.  _ You’re poisonous, dangerous. No one wants to be near you. You only hurt them. _ He’s always ended up alone; separated from Scott in the orphanage, confined in solitary in prison, watching half the messed up little family he found with Charles turn their backs on him, and then the other half crumble. Maybe dying alone is all that’s ever been in his future. 

He curls into a corner, and lets the tears he’s been holding back all this time finally fall. It doesn’t matter, no one can see them here. Not even him. 

* * *

When he wakes up, it’s to a warmth that seems almost too strong. And light is making its way through his eyelids again.  _ Am I back in that room? Are they going to cut me open this time, are they tired of poking and scratching the surface? _ He remembers a story in a book of fables Mother used to read at night, about the greedy farmers who cut open the goose that laid golden eggs to try and get them all at once, and he doesn’t know why after all these years that’s something he remembers.  _ Maybe they can’t figure out how my powers work and this is the only thing they can think of to try. _

But he’s not laying on that hard, flat table. As a matter of fact, he’s not on something flat at all. There are jagged edges and uneven rises, and it feels like a corner of something is digging into his shoulder. He shifts slightly, and cloth scuffs against his skin, not the thin sheet from the lab but actual clothing. He rolls away from the blinding light and opens his eyes. 

There’s nothing around him but ashy broken concrete and twisted metal, and shards of glass. It looks like a bombed out building, and he shudders.  _ Did I do this? Did my powers come back somehow and I destroyed the whole lab? _ But then he sees brown weeds poking up through the cracks in the concrete underneath him.  _ No, this has been ruined for a long time. _

He looks down at his hands and arms, he’s wearing the same kind of olive-drab shirt and pants he had back in Vietnam.  _ Did I dream everything?  _ He wonders if maybe he was in another explosion or if something knocked him out, and he’s laying somewhere in some deserted, bombed out town, left for dead. He reaches up to feel for his dog tags; if he still has them this was all a dream. Stryker took them and sent them home (though who he sent them to exactly he’s not sure, because the address he listed on his enlistment form was Charles’s house) and claimed he was killed in the war; he told Alex so when he came to see him down in that cold dark room.  _ No one will come looking for me, he bragged about that. _

There’s a strip of cold metal around his throat instead of the chain for the tags. Alex reaches up to tug at it, and suddenly a blinding pain turns the world white.  _ Stop, please make it stop! _ He can’t tell if he’s screaming out loud or if his throat has seized up. Finally the agony passes and he realizes he’s laying on his back on the ground, twitching and shaking, lungs gasping desperately for air.  _ What was that? _

He reaches for his neck again, this time slowly, fingers shaking. The second they meet the chilly strip of metal, he’s rewarded with the same white-hot pain. This time it seems like it lasts longer, but he has no way of knowing. Not really. Seconds stretch into hours when it feels like he’s dying. And when the pain finally vanishes, he stays still, hands clenched tightly at his sides. If trying to find out what this...this  _ collar _ is is why he’s hurting, he’ll leave it alone. He lays there on his back and listens to the wind rasping across the ground and dead leaves fluttering. He can’t hear a single bird. The silence seems deafening.  _ Am I the only living thing here? _ He has no idea what this place is. 

He can hear scuffling, something climbing through the rubble to get to him. He freezes up.  _ What now?  _ Are they coming for him? He doesn’t remember running away. Or being left here.  _ Is this another test? _

Someone in the same olive fatigues Alex has climbs over the heap of concrete and twisted rebar to his left. A youngish guy, with raggedly cut reddish curly hair and a hunger-sharp face. He looks familiar, but Alex is still reeling from the literal shock a few minutes ago, and he’s having trouble remembering his own name, let alone anyone else’s. 

He blinks a couple times as the guy slides down the heap of debris and comes toward him.  _ I know who he is, I do… _ His fragmented, scattering thoughts supply the picture of glider wings and a blue and yellow suit. 

“S-Sean?” He chokes out, his throat feeling stiff and useless after the shocks. 

Sean blinks, staring at Alex like he’s having the same kind of trouble placing him. “How...who... _ Alex? _ ” His face is a mixture of excitement, resignation, and horror. 

“We thought you were dead,” Alex whispers.  _ Raven told me. Why would she lie… _

“Clearly not.” Sean shakes his head. “They probably do that with every mutant in here. Make up some lie so no one comes looking.” Alex thinks about the dog tags and nods. “I mean, in the end, I guess it’s not a lie anymore. No one makes it out of this place. I was really hoping they wouldn’t be able to find you in ‘Nam.” 

Alex shakes his head, as much as he can when every muscle in his body feels simultaneously seized up and too weak to even lift one finger. “They put the mutants in segregated units, kept an eye on us constantly,” he manages to choke out. “They came and tried to take us all.” He drags in a deep, shuddering breath. “Raven...she was there, she tried to get us out. But they got me anyway.” The story is too long to tell, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. “They...um, they kept me somewhere for a while, and then I woke up here, with this thing…” he gestures vaguely at the collar. 

“Don’t touch that.” Sean shakes his head. “I don’t know what they are, exactly, but if you try to remove them, or if you get too close to the edge of the town, they hurt you. If it’s bad enough, they knock you out.” He shudders. “That’s how it got Angel. She tried to get away.”

“Angel?” Alex never knew what happened to her after she left with Erik. 

“She was here, for a while. She was here before me. But then the Sentinels got too good for her.” He shudders.

“What are you talking about?” Alex mumbles. He still feels like he can’t really move. 

“She decided if she was going out, she was going on her own terms.” Sean rocks back on his heels. “I didn’t hate her. I wanted to, for turning on us, but I knew what they were doing to her, and she didn’t deserve  _ that _ .”

“No, I mean...what killed her? What are these Sentinels?” Alex wonders if these people have some weirdly fancy name for guards. But the horror in Sean’s voice doesn’t sound like it could be inspired by normal humans.

“That’s why they have us all here,” Sean whispers. “They’re building machines to kill mutants, using our own powers against us. And they’re testing them…”

“With us.” 

Sean nods. “They pit their new designs against mutants. Sometimes one, sometimes two of us. And if we win, they go back to the drawing board, and we go back to the labs. So they can figure out how to make the Sentinels better than us.” He shivers. “Sometimes I think the losers are lucky.”

Alex can only nod.  _ Don’t think about that room. Don’t think about the table, and the knives, and the needles. Don’t think about the pain. Don’t think about the dark and the cold. _

“I don’t know when they’re sending out the Sentinels. Sometimes it’s only a couple hours after they put us here. Once it was almost a whole day.” Sean is jumpy, scanning the terrain, and he’s got the same look in his eyes guys who have been in Vietnam for a while get whenever the unit is on the move. Alex has been in a lot of battles, and one of the worst things about them is the unexpected way the enemy can simply burst out of the jungle and attack. 

“I guess we should get moving, then.” Alex painfully pushes himself to his feet. “If they’re gonna get us anyway, we can at least give ‘em hell.” 

* * *

Alex tries to pay attention while he and Sean wander through the ruined town they’ve been dumped in the middle of. His head is still ringing from the shocks.  _ If they want these things to be able to beat mutants, they’re sure not testing them on us when we’re at full capacity.  _ His powers haven’t even recharged properly, although the sun is helping. He’s feeling a little less completely drained. He wonders if the scientists will wait for his powers to come back before they send in these Sentinels, or if maybe they’re not aware of how long it takes for him to recover from that dark hole they were keeping him in.

He’s vaguely hungry, but they’ve been feeding him decently well so it’s not seriously problematic yet. But if these tests last for any length of time, it will be. There’s literally nothing alive in this town but him and Sean and the insects. Mosquitoes are swarming in the shadows, and flies buzz all over. He wonders, eerily casually, what they live on. It’s better than the leeches in the jungle, at least. 

“So, how come you look almost the same as when I last saw you?” Sean asks. “It’s been eight years since I left the mansion.” Alex shrugs. He’s not really sure, himself, exactly why this is.  _ I don’t really feel older either.  _ Except that he has a thousand years’ worth of terrible memories from the war. “I turned twenty-one and I guess...I just kinda stayed there. Hank thinks it might be another part of my mutation, slowing down aging now that I’m an adult.”

“That’s unfair, I can tell I’m twenty-six. Wait, if I’m twenty-six but you’re stuck at twenty-one… does this mean I finally get to get revenge for all those times you held it over me that you were two years older?” Alex just groans. 

“I’m not sure that’s how it works…”

“Oh, I think it is.” Sean chuckles. “So this time around, you better listen to  _ me _ when I tell you not to do stupid dangerous things.” He cuffs the back of Alex’s head playfully,  _ exactly what I used to do to him _ , and Alex shoves his hand away, shaking his head but smiling a little. This reminds him of the few memories he still has of Scott, before they got split up.  _ This is what having a big brother always feels like, I guess.  _

There’s an odd sort of comfort in that thought. Because when Scott was still around, Alex was never really afraid of anything. He knew Scott would protect him. It makes this whole awful situation feel just a tiny bit better. He has someone looking out for him. He’s not alone anymore.  _ Not that that means anything against machines designed to kill mutants. _

He wants to try his powers, see how well they’re recovering, but he’s afraid of setting off that damn collar again. “Will this thing try to kill me if I use my powers?” 

“I-I don’t know, actually,” Sean says. “I’ve only ever used mine in fights, and the whole point of those is to test the Sentinels against our powers, so they kind of need to let us use them then.” 

Alex shrugs, he’s not going to risk it. “If they are trying to see if we can beat these things, why are they intentionally weakening us before putting us out here?”

“I think they’re in a hurry,” Sean says. “They used to wait days after experimenting, before they put us here. Now they just cut us up and then throw us out here for the tests. There’s some guy called Trask, he came out here a few days ago, real anti-mutant nut, he was talking to Stryker and one of the doctors. They didn’t know I could hear them, thought I was passed out.” The way he says it so casually makes Alex shudder. “Said something about unveiling a Sentinel to the public this week, that they finally had a viable power source.”

Alex freezes.  _ God, no, please, no. _ This isn’t fair.  _ I didn’t even want these powers. And now someone is going to use them to create a machine to kill every mutant out there? _ He wants to be sick, right here, but he can’t afford to be. He does stumble, nearly crashing to the ground before Sean catches him.

“Hey, man, you okay?”

Alex shakes his head. He doesn’t want to admit it, but sooner or later Sean will figure it out. Probably when the Sentinels come for them. “The power source is me. They figured out how my powers work and they’re using it to create energy for the Sentinels.” He feels lower than dirt.  _ I would rather be dead than let someone use my powers against other mutants.  _ He felt horrible enough when Shaw killed Darwin with them.  _ If Stryker and Trask turn these things loose on the world, it will be my fault. It will all be my fault.  _

This time he does collapse. He’s better off dead if that happens.  _ How could I ever face Charles, or Hank, or Raven again? What if one of those things kills them? _ He’s shaking. He knows what this is, well, maybe not the right name for it, but he’s seen it happen to guys when someone they know gets shot, or when they take a life for the first time and see the face of the man they just killed.  _ It’s a devastating kind of grief. The kind where you know that no matter what happens now, you can never go back. Never be the same person you were an hour ago. _ Whether Alex by some miracle survives this hell or not, he’s going to be the reason these mutant-hunting machines are ready to be used. 

Alex feels it before he sees it. A low vibration in the ground, like distant shelling or the rumble of trucks.  _ Something big is coming. _ He can’t do this now, he just can’t. 

“Alex, come on. We have to get out of the open.” Sean is tugging at his arm, eyes wide and panicky. Alex scrambles to his feet.  _ He’s watched who knows how many people he knows die. He doesn’t want to watch it happen to me. _ At the very least, Alex can try not to put his friend through that. 

“So is there any good way to fight these things?” Alex asks, once he and Sean are huddled behind the crumbling wall of what used to be a grocery store. 

“They’re made to withstand our powers, but sometimes that means they have common-sense design flaws,” Sean says. “The builders are so focused on making them impervious to heat, or sound waves, or whatever, that they fail to realize they’re making them so heavy they can’t lift themselves if they fall, or that they’ve shielded them so well that it’s impossible for them to sense one of us coming.” He shrugs. “But the more we use those against them, the more they design them out.” He glances at Alex. “Sometimes I wonder if we’d be doing other mutants a favor by losing. By leaving these things with gaping blind spots and undefended corners, giving the ones out there a fighting chance. But then the fighting starts, and the self-preservation instincts kick in, and I keep hoping there’s some kind of way out of this.” 

He stops, and in the silence Alex hears the rumble getting louder. Except that now it’s a series of dull thuds, like marching footsteps. He glances quickly around the corner of the building and promptly wishes he hadn’t. 

There are three of them.  _ Oh, that’s not even fair. _ Alex wonders if each one of these things has a different ability, like the various mutants.  _ If they figured out a way to combine the effects of multiple mutations into one of these robots, it would be over for us. _ Something that could adapt like that… 

He watches the things continue to walk through the rubble of the city streets. They’re moving in a straight line toward him and Sean, and he wonders if they’re homing in on heat signatures or have some way of detecting mutant biology.  _ If we run, they’ll only track us down, and we’ll be weaker than ever. If we fight back, make a stand here, we have a chance.  _ The Sentinels are going to have to pass one of the few tall buildings, and Alex is pretty sure that can work in his and Sean’s favor. He’s developed a decent awareness of understanding defensive positions while he was in ‘Nam. 

“Sean, I’m gonna need to get up there.” He has an idea. He just hopes they live long enough for it to work. 

The crumbled walls around them are surrounded by scattered pieces of rusting rebar, and Alex gathers as much as he can carry. It’s a pitifully small amount, he didn’t realize how weak and exhausted captivity has made him. His arms shake as he struggles up an inclined heap of rubble that gets him almost all the way to the top. The Sentinels have fanned out, probably in an attempt to surround him and Sean from all sides. There’s only one that will be directly passing the building. 

He piles the rebar on the edge and tries to focus his powers. It’s a little less of a struggle when they’re weak like this.  _ I just need to melt it.  _ The Sentinel turns toward them, clearly it’s picked up their movement.  _ We need to hurry. _ The metal is melting into a shimmering pool now.

The Sentinel swings an arm up, clearly ready to blast them with Angel’s powers. “Sean! Now!” 

Alex sucks and covers his ears as Sean’s bloodcurdling scream flings spatters of the molten metal at the Sentinel. More and more flies out, coating the visor on its head and hardening there.  _ I can’t believe that actually worked.  _

The Sentinel fires, but without its visual targeting, the shot goes wild. Still, it’s enough to make Alex sure they need to get off this roof, right now. The Sentinel lumbers toward the building in some crazed suicide attack, and Sean flings them both off the edge, stopping their fall with another yell. 

Without the glider wings, he can’t really control their descent, and they crash to the ground in a tangle of dirt and bruises. Alex feels his left leg collide with something, and there’s a sudden searing agony. He thinks he might be screaming, but he’s not sure if that’s just the ringing in his ears from Sean. 

And then there’s a loud explosion, and Alex rolls over to see the Sentinel that just attacked them split nearly in half, the edges of a massive hole in its chest smoking. “What the hell?” Sean asks. Alex doesn’t have enough air left in his lungs to respond. Then he sees the second Sentinel a couple blocks away, some kind of cannon retracting back into its arm.  _ I guess they were targeting us with heat signatures. We just gave that one something a lot hotter to home in on.  _

The destroyed Sentinel plummets to the ground in a haze of dust that makes Alex cough.  _ Clearly, they didn’t factor in what happens when one of their heat-targeting robots gets its faceplate coated with a bunch of hot molten metal.  _

He’s so ridiculously proud of himself and Sean for accidentally causing these things to fight each other that he forgot there was a third Sentinel they hadn’t accounted for. He remembers the second a shadow falls over both of them, blocking out the sun. The third Sentinel is nearly on top of them. 

Sean is already on his feet and backing away, and Alex tries to push himself up to follow, but the searing ache in his left leg becomes an absolutely unbearable agony the second he puts any weight on it. He crumples to the ground with a strangled scream, and there’s no time to so much as try to scramble away before the Sentinel leans over and pins him to the ground with one metallic hand. 

He can’t breathe, this thing has its massive hand wrapped around his neck. It’s going to crush his throat if he can’t get it off.  Alex shoves and struggles, trying to shove the huge arm away, but his powers are all but gone and he’s weak from being locked up. It hurts and he can’t breathe and everything is getting blurry and dark. There’s odd little sparks around the edges of his vision. His hands feel hot against the metal, but the Sentinel isn’t reacting at all. The metal isn’t warping with the heat, not at all. He can’t breathe and he’s going to die. There’s a horrible high-pitched ringing in his ears, and he wishes it would stop.  _ Why can’t death at least be peaceful? _

Then the Sentinel falls away from him, crashing to the ground in a heap, and Alex gasps in a breath, the air burning his throat and lungs. He struggles, trying to get onto his feet.  _ Where’s Sean? _ And then he sees the Sentinel move, and a limp tangle of red hair and green cloth thrown away from it, skidding to a stop in the street. He’s seen enough dead bodies to know that’s what he’s looking at. Sean’s eyes are wide and sightless, his hair stained with blood making it so much redder than it should be. 

Alex screams, the same broken wail he’s heard a hundred times before in the depths of the jungle, when someone’s tent-mate, someone’s friend, catches a VC bullet. Almost without his thought, fire flares through his hands, and he barely has time to direct the shot toward a now-exposed weak point under the chestplate of the robot before there’s nothing but red flame. The world narrows to heat and pain and grief and a burning anger. There’s a terrible smell of scorching metal and plastic, and then an explosion that flings Alex backward into a wall. He slides down, dazed, the world spinning around him and his ears ringing. The Sentinel is nothing but a heap of smoking ruins. 

He doesn’t wait for the other Sentinel to start coming his way.  _ Sean is dead, there’s nothing I can do for him now except maybe, somehow, make it out of this alive and stop this horror. _ He drags himself to his feet, trying to ignore the agony in his leg, and runs. 

* * *

Alex can’t get far before his leg crumbles underneath him, sending him to the ground with a thud that knocks the air out of his lungs again and leaves him gasping, unable to get up for a few minutes, every bruise and ache suddenly flaring up with fresh pain. He has to do something about this leg or he doesn’t stand a chance. There’s a row of houses still standing nearby, he’s somehow made his way into the residential district. There might be something inside one he can use. He chooses the one that doesn’t have a porch with steps. He’d never make it up them, he’s sure.

Alex drags himself through the broken door, wincing at the sickening ache that shoots up his leg at every step. His leg is definitely broken, probably not all the way, but it’s not good. He’s grateful it’s not a compound fracture. At this point, that’s enough to feel like a miracle.

These houses have probably all been picked over a hundred times.  _ If they keep testing the Sentinels here, dozens of wounded mutants probably did the same thing I am. _ There’s absolutely nothing in this one, aside from some shattered furniture and rotting rugs. There might be a medical cabinet upstairs, in a bathroom, but the thought of that many stairs makes his leg shake and burn. He can’t climb. Even if he could manage to pull himself up there, he’d make such a racket the Sentinel would find him for sure. 

He looks around the room again, mentally cataloging his resources.  _ Curtain rod. Chair. Rug. Lamp with no cord. Broken clock.  _ None of it is fantastic, but he thinks there might be enough here for him to improvise. 

He knows, from basic first aid training, that he doesn’t necessarily need to splint a break in that part of his leg if he’s not going to be moving.  _ They told us lower arms and lower leg bone pairs will splint each other. Unless you break both bones in the arm or the leg, the other one will hold them in place. _ But it’s not guaranteed to work if you’re moving around a lot, and he might have no choice to but try and run from these things at some point. And he’d rather not have to worry about the bone coming free and jabbing out of his leg.  _ That would probably take me down for good. _

He yanks a rung out of the side of the rotting couch and places it against the side of his leg. It’s a little short, but it should stabilize the worst of the break. He tugs another one free, it takes a few tries before he finds a loose one this time.  _ I need something to tie them with.  _ The fabric on the couch cushions is rotting away, it would never hold. He resigns himself to tearing off pieces of his thin shirt; he’s already cold and he hates the thought of having even less protection from the chill tonight. But he hates the thought of his leg getting worse even more. 

He bites back a scream of pain as the makeshift splint tightens against his already swollen leg.  _ I can’t make noise. If I do, those things will find me and kill me. _

He doesn’t particularly care, at this point, about whether he lives or dies. There’s nothing he wants to stay around for. But too many people have sacrificed to keep him alive. Scott, his whole family really. Charles and the other mutants protected him and got him out of prison, and now Sean is dead because he got between Alex and the Sentinel that would have killed him. _ I can’t make what they did a waste.  _ He has to stay alive for them. 

Suddenly, there’s a thumping rumble that catches his attention. Too regular to be thunder, too heavy to be anything but a Sentinel. 

He doesn’t know how it found him.  _ Body heat, movement, noise? _ It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that if he doesn’t get out of here, fast, he’s going to die. He shoves the back door open and limps away through a yard of brown, dead grass, under a sky that’s no longer unforgivingly burning but leaden and grey. He doesn’t look back.  _ If that thing kills me, it kills me. _ He can’t decide if it’s a relief or not when he hears nothing following him.  _ There’s not going to be an easy way out for me. _

* * *

The black clouds finally open up, spilling drenching, icy rain down on the town. Alex shivers, limping along under the cover of ruined buildings and the sheets of water. The ground is becoming a sea of broken asphalt and mud. He’s scared of stepping in a hole and falling, of making his leg worse. He needs to find somewhere to hole up. Somewhere a Sentinel isn’t going to find him.

He’s not going to hide in a standing building again; clearly the Sentinels don’t just adapt to mutant’s powers, they also learn strategically.  _ Probably a lot of the mutants they hunted hid in places like that.  _ He’s going to have to find a place that no one would expect him to go. 

Some of the ruined buildings have enough structure left to give him some shelter from this storm. He stumbles across the road toward a leaning, half-crumbled house. It’s brick, a little sturdier than some of the others, and there’s a wall that looks like it will block the worst of the rain and wind.

And then he’s falling, his leg in agony, tumbling to the muddy, soaked, rough ground. There was a hole he didn’t see, and he put his foot right into it. 

_ He’s being flung backward, body aching and burning. The land mine’s explosion shakes the ground and the air. The world is white and crimson, and the world is all light and heat and unbearable loudness. He’s lying on the ground, uniform scorched, body gashed with shrapnel, but not a burn in sight. Everyone else is staring at him. _

Alex blinks. He’s not laying in the mud in a jungle in Vietnam, he’s laying in the mud somewhere in a town in the US. Those are potholes, not the aftermath of a shelling. This isn’t a jungle, it’s a ruined city street. But slogging through mud and rain, hurting and forcing himself to keep going, feels like Vietnam again.

All but the cold. He was never cold there. The weather was mostly hot and humid, and even on the days the temperature dipped, his mutation kept the cold at bay. But now, his powers are skating on the edge of flickering out altogether. He’s still starved for energy, and without warmth and sunlight, his powers will take even longer to recharge.  

He looks down at his leg, afraid to see if he’s snapped it completely or worse, if the bone is now sticking out of his leg. He can’t see much in the cloudy darkness, but there’s no eerie white of visible bone and he doesn’t feel hot blood running down his leg. He relaxes slightly. He’s seen too many wounds like that, it always made him shiver. 

He can’t force himself back to his feet, and even if he could he’d be terrified of stepping in another hole. Instead, he drags himself across the ground until he’s huddled in the pitiful shelter of the standing remains of the wall. 

At least with the rain, there’s water to drink. He cups his hands, catching enough to soothe his raw throat. But the cold water settles in his stomach and feels like it’s freezing him from the inside out. 

He shivers, his bad leg stretched out in front of him, his good one pulled up as close to his body as possible. His clothes are stuck to his skin with mud and water, and he can’t stop shaking, even though his ribs and leg hurt worse and worse each time he shudders. 

Thunder crashes and he flinches. He blinks, because for a second it felt like Scott was right there, holding him close, keeping him warm, trying to keep him dry until someone came to help them. But it’s just memories. He’s all alone here. And no one is coming to help him. 

Alex doesn’t know where his brother could possibly be.  _ After Cuba, after the news was talking about us, I really thought he might come. I wanted to believe he was out there somewhere looking for me and that he was going to find me and we’d be together again.  _ But Scott doesn’t even know Alex had powers.  _ Does he have them too? _ Sometimes siblings in the same family don’t end up both being mutants. Sean’s sister was totally normal. Maybe Scott was too. 

Alex has wondered now for years if Scott will even want him.  _ Maybe he does know where I was. Maybe he just didn’t want anything to do with a mutant. _ Maybe Scott is just an ordinary human with a nice normal life. And maybe he did hear about Cuba, and he’s absolutely horrified that his own brother is one of these ‘freaks’.  _ Maybe he’s ashamed of me. Maybe he doesn’t want to be anywhere near me. _

He blinks, because more than rain is running down his cheeks now.  _ What if not even my own brother wants me? _ He doesn’t want to believe that Scott could be capable of the kind of hatred and bigotry Alex has experienced so often, but the truth is, he doesn’t know his own brother.  _ What if he changed? What if a family who adopted him was anti-mutant and trained him to hate them? _ He can’t bear to think that his own brother might think Alex is a dangerous thing that deserves to die.

Alex wraps his arms as tightly around himself as he can, tells himself the water running down his face is rain and his body is only shaking from the cold, and tries to fall asleep.  _ I’m not crying myself to sleep. I’m not a child. I’m not… _

* * *

Alex wakes up to the distinctly uncomfortable feeling of something crawling up his nose. He sits up quickly, snuffling until the mosquito that was causing the problem is gone. He realizes his  hands and face are covered in itching bites, and the bugs are whining around his head in humming clouds.  _ Not that that’s anything new. _ He’s so used to being surrounded by all manner of insects and worse in Vietnam that he slept through it all.

It’s still cloudy. Alex sighs, of course his luck isn’t going to turn around now. There’s no food here, nothing  _ alive  _ here but him and these unbearable insects, but he was hoping at least he might be able to have his powers start coming back. But without sunlight he’s going to have to wait longer.  _ If those Sentinels find me, I’m going to die.  _

There’s still water laying in a puddle in the road, and even though it’s by no means the cleanest, he’s so thirsty. And he ought to take it while he can get it. 

He hasn’t seen himself in weeks, and when he looks into the puddle he realizes why Sean didn’t recognize him at first. He still has only the patchiest stubble of growth where a beard should be, but his hair has gotten longer and it’s falling into his eyes now. It’s not really blond anymore, more of a dirty mousy brown that’s probably from dirt. His face is terribly thin, cheeks sunken and eyes hollow. And after yesterday, he’s filthy and caked in mud and dried blood, with gashes and bruises all over his face and the skin that’s visible under his torn shirt. He looks like the POWs his unit rescued from a VietCong camp when they first arrived in country. 

Alex shivers at the sight of himself and he’s glad when dipping his hands in the water shatters the already ruined reflection.

* * *

He’s stumbling away from the town, toward the treeline in the distance, wondering if it’s better to try to escape or to simply die on his own terms out here, when he hears the low rhythmic thumping that in two days has become as terrifying as the click of a land mine or the swish of bodies through foliage.

The Sentinel is coming. Alex half turns, the thing is halfway to him already, there’s no cover here. He’s in the middle of nothing but open ground and there’s nowhere to hide. Still, some deep-seated piece of him with a voice something like Charles is screaming at him not to give up.  _ That’s rich coming from you, suppressing your powers because you couldn’t stand being paralyzed. _ He immediately feels horrible for even thinking that.  _ If I could have shut my powers down, I would have.  _ But something in Hank’s serum didn’t react well with him; he’d tried.  _ Hank said it was one of the worst allergic reactions he’d ever seen. _

So he forces himself to move, stumbling toward the trees. They look so far away. He can hear the rumble from behind him. It’s not firing at him, maybe it knows that he could absorb that energy. Maybe it’s learned how his power works. 

His leg feels like it’s on fire, and he can’t stop shaking. He doesn’t know if he can stay on his feet much longer. He’s so tired and hungry and his powers are all but used up. Even the war wasn’t this bad. He wants to stop, to lie down and have at least a few moments of peace before he dies, but making things easy on yourself just isn’t in the Summers blood. So he keeps moving. 

He just manages to reach the first of the twisted, gnarled, dying trees before the Sentinel catches up. The ground is slick with loose pine needles and broken branches litter the forest floor. If he doesn’t want to fall, he has to move even more slowly. He’s going to be caught…

He hears the Sentinel crashing after him through the trees. It’s breaking them like they’re as flimsy as those branches underfoot…

Alex stops. He turns around, spreads out his hands, and tries to force every tiny fragment that’s left of his power into them. The beams of plasma flash out, slicing through those same brittle tree trunks as if they’re paper. 

Tree after tree snaps off, crashing into the Sentinel. It stays upright for the first few, but then the trees begin to tangle under it. It stumbles, creaking and groaning, and then smashes to the ground. Alex aims the last flare of his power at its head. There’s a sparking whoosh, and then the massive metal body goes limp, the head nothing more than a smoking ruin. 

Alex crumples to the ground, his broken leg in absolute agony. There’s no way he can stand, let alone walk.  _ They’re going to come find me and take me back. _ He doesn’t even have the energy to feel anything about it.  _ They’re going to keep doing this until they make these things beat me, and then I’m going to die. _ He wonders if this is that indefinable look he saw in the faces of some of the men over in ‘Nam.  _ They looked like nothing in the world mattered, like if they stopped caring whether they lived or died death couldn’t scare them anymore. _

At the time, Alex thought they’d made a choice about that attitude. That they’d voluntarily decided to withdraw from life. But laying here in the mud, broken and bleeding, he realizes that it wasn’t a choice at all. It was just the war.  _ Sooner or later, it does this to all of us _ . He closes his eyes, and the world goes black.

* * *

“Such a shame. This one was truly promising.” Alex can’t open his eyes, but he can hear the voices hovering over him. Wherever he is, it’s cold. He realizes he’s not even shivering. Too exhausted, too weak.

“We don’t have time to wait for his leg to heal. He doesn’t have healing powers,” someone else says. “Trask’s upping the deadline again, some mutant attack in DC. Apparently he’s about to get exactly what he wants. A war.”

Alex can’t bring himself to care. They may as well kill him. He doesn’t want to fight another war. He can’t. He’s done.  _ They don’t realize they’re doing the most merciful thing they can. _

Then there’s a crash, and shouting, and Alex smells smoke and dust. Something bad is happening, people are yelling. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore...

* * *

Alex was really hoping he wasn’t going to wake up again. Especially not still in that room that smells like cold metal and antiseptic. Oddly, he feels a little warmer than before. He blinks, and this time his eyes do open, even if it is slowly. Everything looks blurry. His hands aren’t cuffed to the table any longer, and when he moves them he feels blankets covering him. Not just a thin flimsy sheet. Someone’s actually trying to keep him alive.  _ That’s not kind. They don’t know it, but it’s cruel. _ He doesn’t want to be warm and comfortable if all they’re going to do is throw him back out there to test their machines.

He lets his head flop to the side, too tired to do anything more than that, and a familiar face comes into view. “Wecome back to the land of the living, Alex. We were afraid we lost you.” 

“Charles?” The professor looks better than when Alex left. Still tired, still a little dejected, maybe. But he’s smiling now. 

“Yes. In the flesh.”

“How…”

“That’s a bit of a long story.” Alex shakes his head.  _ With Charles, it’s always a long story. _ He swallows, his throat is painfully dry. 

Alex pushes himself a bit more upright. His wounded leg feels heavy, there’s probably a cast on it now. He struggles to prop himself up against the pillows, coughing against the dry, bitter taste in his mouth. “I don’t understand…” His voice is so hoarse and raspy. 

Charles hands him a glass of water. “I’m so sorry, Alex.”

_ For what? It wasn’t his fault I was taken...tortured... _ He starts shaking and he can’t stop, water sloshing out over his hand and his chest and the blankets, as the memories rush back and threaten to take over completely. _ Pain, fear, cold, starvation… _ The shivers rip through him, and his leg flares in pain.

“Easy, now. You’ve had a hard time of it and you need to rest, Alex.” Charles runs his fingers through Alex’s hair, and Alex can feel soothing, soft thoughts flickering through his head.  _ Wait, he’s using his telepathy again? _

“What happened? How did you get me out?” He still isn’t sure this isn’t all some hallucination, some twisted fever dream. He’s going to wake up in another room, with strangers all around him, and they’re going to lay him out on a table and slice him open…

“Oh Alex.” Charles’s voice is soft. “It’s even worse than I’d feared.”  _ He’s reading my mind. _ Alex can’t find the energy to be angry about that. “When the government shut down the Sentinel program and decommissioned the labs, they found over a dozen mutant test subjects there. Some they’ve returned to their families, if they were willing to accept them back. Most of them are staying here.” He smiles. “I’ve opened my doors to any mutants who are seeking help and shelter, and I’d made sure anyone they recovered from the Sentinel program had the option to come. They had no way of identifying some of the mutants, and many were either incoherent or in comas, and so they brought them here immediately. I couldn’t believe it when they had you with them.” He frowns. “We received your dog tags, sent here from the Army. They notified us you had been killed in Vietnam.” 

“Stryker, the man who captured me, he sent them. He wanted you to stop looking for me.”

“I’m so sorry we didn’t get you out sooner.” He brushes Alex’s hair away from his forehead. “I would have tried to find you, to see if you were really dead, but Raven destroyed Cerebro.”

“She what?”

“You’ve missed a lot,” Hank says, smiling as he walks into the room. “Some crazy dude who claimed he was from the future showed up, and Erik tried to destroy the world again, and apparently Raven’s not really on his side anymore.” 

“The ‘world’ is a slight overstatement, Hank. It was a stadium.” Charles laughs. “The world is all well and fine, and it will still be here tomorrow. Get some sleep, Alex, you’ve earned it.”

“I-I don’t...I…” He’s been haunted by nightmares since the plane crash, and now there will be a hundred more. He doesn’t want to go there. To be torn apart by the demons in his head.

“Don’t worry about that, Alex. Leave it to me,” Charles says gently, continuing to brush Alex’s hair off his forehead. “I’ll be right here.”

Alex knows he’ll never tell Charles to his face how grateful he is for this simple gesture of kindness, of near-parental love. He also knows he’ll never have to. Because from that gentle smile spreading over Charles’s face, he already knows. And when Alex slips away into a dreamless sleep, the same smile is flickering over his own. 


End file.
